1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a data transfer interface system that interfaces with a controller and data storage drives. In particular, the system relates to a method for directly transferring data between multiple data storage drives.
2. Related Art
Data transfer interfaces may be found in systems that transfer digital data between communication devices, such as printers, video screens, and storage media. For instance, a data transfer interface permits a computer to send and receive information to peripheral devices such as hard disk drives and optical data storage media. The peripheral devices may connect to a control device or host via an AT-Attachment (ATA) bus with the IBM/AT PC format. The peripheral devices also may connect via the extended ATA bus standard, AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI), known as ATA/ATAPI, and similar types of buses. The ATAPI supports the connection of external peripheral devices to personal computer systems.
A communication session with a peripheral device using the ATA/ATAPI bus proceeds through several steps. In the first step, the host computer writes a command to a command register in a peripheral device. The host then executes a data transfer step where data is transferred between a peripheral device to a computer and then from the computer to another peripheral device. In this operation, only a single peripheral device at a time may be selected to perform either the read operation or the write operation making the transfer of data time-consuming. Further delay is encountered when a large amount of data is transferred. Thus, a need exists to provide a data transfer interface that is capable of transferring the data between peripheral devices such as data storage drives in a more efficient manner.